How would I fill in gaps in my Irish heritage?

[Mallowmarshmallow]

Hello all

I am looking to close up the gaps in my Irish heritage (for the purpose of applying for an Irish passport...). However, my Nan was married five times and now has dementia (and quite possibly even before the dementia couldn't have remembered the details....!)

I have her birth certificate but need to get the marriage certificates.

Does anyone know of any agency/body who could assist me with my search?

Or do I need to apply for 'Who do you think you are?'?!

www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/how-to-trace-your-irish-family-history-a-step-by-step-guide-1.3423973?mode=amp

Some ideas here

Do you need all the marriage certs?

Did she change her name everytime she married and your parent, you're claiming through, is from her last marriage?

I'm a bit baffled here I'm afraid.

She did change her name each time and my father is from her third....

The problem is I'm not sure anyone knows the order of the marriages which means it's tricky to find out the name she was marrying from (as it were) each time....

Have you got your father's birth certificate? That should show your father's place of birth and his mother's maiden name. If your father was born outside of Ireland you will have to apply to the Foreign Births Register to have your birth registered. I'd start there.

Is the parent you're claiming through born on the island of ireland?

Windy, from what I gather, in order to register my birth I need my grandmother's birth certificate, passport and marriage certificates which prove her change of name.... x5....!

I'm claiming my right through a grandparent born on the island of Ireland. My father was born in england after my grandmother moved across....

What info is on your father’s birth certificate? How many of her surnames and her husbands names do you know? Presumably you only need the first three marriage certificates leading up to your father’s birth. You do not need a passport.

We don't know her first marriage which I feel kind of scuppers any subsequent ones as we don't know the first name she changed to and therefore 'who she was' when she married the second time....

OP, you are correct in thinking that you need all of your grandmother's marriage certificates as well as current ID. Have you had no luck searching on Ancestry and Irish Genealogy? If you have her birth certificate then you should know her maiden name and date & location of birth; is it not possible to find her first marriage from that information, by searching the online records?

When I did this I had to go the other way: I knew where my Irish-born grandfather had been married in the UK, and the approximate year (but not place) of his birth, and had to search the records for Northern Ireland for some likely candidates. I did find his birth certificate though, from several possibilities with the same name.

I knew both my grandparents DOB and luckily my grandad doesn’t have a common Irish surname so was able to find both and track backwards /forwards quite easily.

I can see why your search is a bit problematic. But the online records are quite good, the link from the Irish registry website thing. I haven’t actually done anything with mine, it was more curiosity than anything.I can’t claim the same for my DS who would probably benefit from it more than me, so I didn’t bother.

But I have very fond memories of my Irish nan and granddad, and I feel very proud to have Irish heritage.

Have a look at www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/Irish-marriage-records.html

Also try ancestry or similar to see if you can find the marriages on there. Five marriages sounds a lot! Were there any divorces? If not then you need to look for death certs for the husbands to help with dates for the next marriage.

OP you can go to the Dublin records office to search or if you can’t get there you can pay a researcher to search on your behalf. You may be better off working backwards from the third marriage because you know that one.

Mallow I thought you only needed the original marriage certificate, seems I might be wrong, sorry. Do you know where your DGM got married? I'm thinking maybe first marriage in Ireland and rest in UK (let's be fair remarrying four times in Ireland is almost impossible).

If you know her maiden name and her first husbands name finding the first record is fairly easy then it's a case of building a tree for her.

I'm a reasonably competent hobby genealogists, if you'd like some further tips feel free to ask.

Just seen that you may only know third marriage, so that's the place to start

It's quite difficult, the equivalent of the central records office in Dublin burned down

An explosion and fire in the Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922 destroyed many records. Additional records were destroyed by the government. The following records have been destroyed: Two-thirds of The Church of Ireland original parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.

If she was Catholic and you have her baptism certificate it should be straightforward. Whenever someone marries in a Catholic Church the marrying church will have to contact the baptismal church to make sure there aren’t any pre-existing Catholic marriages. The baptismal church will keep a record of any marriages for the baptised individual. (Our priest recently had to refuse to marry a parishioner as her home church in India had a record of her first marriage and she has no paperwork to prove the death of that husband).

If she was Catholic and you don’t have the baptismal cert you could contact churches in the birth area to find out if she was baptised there. A relation of mine has done a lot of this recently and had some success.

Not sure how to proceed if she wasn’t a baptised Catholic.

If the parent you're claiming though is born in ireland you dont need any of your Nan's certs for a passport.

If they were born outside of ireland then chances are the subsequent marriages (and possibly the third marriage) were outside Ireland too. Unless she kept going back to Ireland to get married and leaving to have babies!!